Erotic Hermaphrodyte and Genderless Reason: Tullia d’Aragona and Benedetto Varchi in the “Dialogue of the Infinity of Love”

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss from different points of view the Dialogue of the Infinity of Love of the 16th century courtesan Tullia d’Aragona, reconstructing its historical context. It looks at the partnership between the writer and the competent man of letters Benedetto Varchi in order to integrate the promotion of female culture in an ambitious project of philosophical dissemination in Tuscan vernacular. The image of the cultivated lady elaborated in the Dialogue is compared with the contemporary and very opposite paradigm of Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo d’amore. While in this text woman seems to be relegated to an inferior dimension of irrationality, the Dialogue of the Infinity of Love provides the interlocutor “Tullia” with a considerable degree of autonomy as a thinking subject. The paper examines then the role played by Girolamo Muzio, editor of the Dialogue, with regard to the Rime of the poetess and his place in the midst of the religious debate of the time, stressing her opposition to the “evangelical” trends. It is also considered the relevance of the Dialogue as a specimen of vernacular Aristotelianism, focusing on such controversial issues as infinity and immortality of the soul. The “party game” between the two main interlocutors allows avoid heterodox conclusions. The influential Dialoghi d’amore of Leone Ebreo are finally analyzed as the main source of the text of Tullia and Varchi, pointing at a basic difference of literary register which reduces the intellectual mysticism of the Sephardic author to a more worldly level.